After the FDA has approved a drug, a pharmaceutical company promotes the drug the old-fashioned way using face-to-face (personal) selling. Sales representatives of the pharmaceutical company visit one or more prescribers, leave behind drug samples of the drug, and hope that the prescribers will prescribe these drug samples to their patients. As the costs of personal selling have risen, the utilization of sales representatives has changed. With the proliferation of networking technology, many prescribers are members of online communities where promotion and distribution of drug samples can be accomplished without the use of sales representatives.
A drug sample fulfillment platform developed by MedManage Systems, Inc., is a system for facilitating the distribution of drug samples with/without the use of sales representatives. The drug sample fulfillment platform is tailored based on the brand rules established by the brand manager for each drug. Using the drug sample fulfillment platform, the brand manager can select which prescribers are authorized to order the drug sample of a brand via a fulfillment platform and the services provided thereon, the forms of drug samples they can access, and the drug sample quantity and delivery method. The drug sample fulfillment platform can be configured to allow a prescriber to request physical samples delivered via common carrier. Requests for such physical samples are electronically communicated (including facsimile communications) to the pharmaceutical company designated fulfillment vendors that pick, pack, and ship physical samples to the requesting prescriber's office. Using this method, prescribers no longer need to rely on sales representatives to deliver physical samples.
To obtain either physical samples or pre-printed vouchers, the prescriber prints one or more order form from a drug sample Web site, signs the order forms, and faxes them a designated fulfillment vendor. The pharmaceutical company specifies a fulfillment vendor (whose fax number is printed on the order form) to which the prescriber faxes the signed order form to obtain physical samples and/or pre-printed vouchers as applicable. While the drug sample fulfillment platform has helped to control the rising costs of personal selling, much of its functionality requires manual work done by hand. For example, the prescriber has to print, sign, and fax an order form for drug samples to a fulfillment vendor. Thus, there is a need for an architecture to orchestrate drug sample distribution while avoiding or reducing the foregoing and other problems.